Art Class
by Bob Snickerdoodle
Summary: Spilled brushes, weird crushes, and winking eye-lushes. Alright, that last one was only put in to continue the mini-poem- you got me! In this story, Nudge, Max, and Fang reluctantly enter an art class. WARNING: Contains large amounts of FAX. Takes place before Max and Fang are dating, no spoilers, still bird-kids, one-shot, Max-pov, overwhelming dose of awesomeness...


It smelled like paint covered feet. It smelled like chalk, pencil shavings, and old lady perfume. Why in the world would someone want to create art in a room that smelled like old lady perfume and feet? The only thing this room would inspire me to draw is a knife.

Nudge didn't seem to mind the smell, though, and rushed to find a table in the back of the room, dragging two unhappy and reluctant people behind her; Fang, and myself.

This is how my first, and coincidentally last, day of art class started. Nudge, being Nudge had really wanted to take up an art class, unlike the rest of the flock, and me and Fang, being suckers for Bambi eyes, were the unfortunate two who were forced to take her.

We sat down at a table with one other kid, who Nudge sat next and immediately introduced herself to.

"Hello," she said with a smile, as me and Fang sat down in the way-too-small-metal-chairs, "I'm Nudge! What's your name?"

The kid introduced himself to her as Grant, and they began to talk, or, more accurately, Nudge began to talk, and Grant listened. Fang and I shifted around in the uncomfortable chairs, and I ignored the tingly feeling I felt when his knee brushed against mine.

"Why did I agree to do this?" I whispered to Fang, as the kids kept talking.

He smirked. "Because you have absolutely no self-resistance to her Bambi eyes."

"And you do?"

"I'm a man, I'm strong."

"Oh? Then why are you here?"

He looked at me for a second too long, his deep, dark eyes making my heart melt. I really had to stop thinking this way. Fang was my best friend, my right-hand-man, and that was it. "Because I'd worry about you if I weren't here."

I ignored the random increase of beating in my chest. "I'm not going to hurt myself in an _art_ class, Fang."

"No," he responded, looking up at Nudge and Grant. "I worry about you hurting _other _people."

I opened my mouth to rudely respond, but I was cut off by the sound of the teacher ringing her ridiculously obnoxious bell, which was only slightly less obnoxious than her hair, which looked like a baby monkey on drugs had styled it with a gallon of hair spray and red dye.

The lady had a high pitched voice and introduced herself as Ms. Pearl. She spoke only in metaphors that made absolutely no sense. After she informed us that "the paint brush is the apple of all sparkling sunsets in which we rise and grab hold of" and "art is a bucket of pebbles, we dance and shine with only our inner beauty that erupts out from inside of us and stains the paper of life," I tuned her out, thinking about everything and anything else. And I definitely did _not_ think about Fang. At all. Because that would be wrong. And gorgeous, and funny, and smart… And so, so wrong.

Suddenly, a familiar voice whispered in my ear. "You think she's high?"

"If I hear her talk for another minute, I might need to be," I whispered.

After a short pause, Fang asked, "Are you good at art?" I looked back at him, giving him a quizzical look.

"Not even a little bit," I answered, suddenly curious I asked, "Are you?"

"I don't do art," Fang answered, shrugging. He shot a sideways look over at Grant, on the other side of the table. "That kid keeps looking at you."

I looked over at Grant, and sure enough the child's eyes were straight on me, turning away only as I looked at him. "Weird. Think he's part of the School?"

"Nah. The School wouldn't send their employees here," he responded, "They're evil people, but they're not _this_ evil. He likes you."

"He does _not,_" I said to him, looking back at the Grant kid, who again averted his eyes away from me. Maybe the kid did like me. Sadly, there was somebody else at the table I would much rather receive that kind of attention from, and he was not interested.

Fang shrugged, and leaned back, his strong jaw fixed in the direction of the crazy teacher, his tan muscular arms crossed over his chest. Didn't he know that looking like some sort of super model was not in any way helping out my situation?

Finally, the lady stopped talking in another language and told us what we were doing today. We were to use colored pencils or paint to illustrate something that was important to us. We had the rest of the class to do it, and at the end, we would share our work with the people at our table.

I sat for a second, looking around at the other people at my table, each one of them doing the same. Well, except for Grant, who was only, creepily, looking at me. Within a couple of minutes, we all seemed set on an idea, and, grabbing paper and pencils, got to work. Ms. Pearl came around with "dividers" which were weird things that were placed in between the papers so that you couldn't see what the people around you were drawing. They were supposed to help to "enhance the surprise of reveal" and to "keep people from copying."

It was calm and quiet, except for the weird music that Ms. Pearl was playing. I tried to focus on my drawing, but the heat of Grant staring at me and the tingles of Fang's knee brushing mine were making that extremely difficult.

Most of the drawing time was like that, except for when Grant accidentally shoved his divider, causing a cup full of paintbrushes to fall in between me and Fang, the delicate brushes cascading towards the floor. Because of our reflexes, we both bent down, probably a bit too quickly, to pick them up, catching a few before they even hit the floor. Fang and I both went after the same brush, his strong hand gently grabbing mine. We looked up at each other, and it took me less than a second to realize how close our faces were.

He smirked at me. "You know, according to Nudge, paint-smeared faces are _so _last season."

I gave him a confused look as he wiped the supposed paint off of my nose, and, as I blushed like crazy, used his thumb to wipe the paint off the side of my jaw.

"There you go," he said, rolling his dark eyes at my lack of response. "You're welcome."

I hastily grabbed a handful of brushes and sat up. "Thanks," I muttered as I put them back in the cup, angry at how humiliated I was. At this point, I was thankful for the dividers. No one needed to see my red face.

After a long time, Ms. Pearl told us to flip our papers over, and take the dividers down.

Grant was first to show his drawing, his creepy, creepy drawing… of me. Frankly, it didn't look a whole lot like me, the kid wasn't much of an artist, but it certainly _was_ me. Which, of course, made Fang laugh, and wince in pain as I kicked him. The fact that Grant was smiling at me was not helping him out. At all.

Nudge was next, and she drew a picture of the flock, minus the wings. She didn't draw us picture-perfect, though, more of cartoons, with FAMILY written across the top.

I smiled at her. "That's amazing, Nudge. I'll be sure to frame that when we get home."

She beamed at me. "Awesome! What'd you draw, Max?"

The smile faded from my face as I slowly flipped over my paper.

Everyone stared at it with confused looks on their faces.

"That's awesome, Max… What is it?"

"It's a bird," I informed them, blankly.

"That's a bird?" Fang asked in amazement. I found it slightly insulting how shocked he was that I had drawn a bird. I mean, it was bad but it wasn't _that _bad. If you squinted really hard, it mildly resembled a drunk penguin.

"Yes, it is, and a great one at that," I responded, "Its beauty is on the inside."

"It must be really, really deep inside," Nudge muttered.

I shot her a glare, as she shrugged. Fang was still staring at me weirdly.

"Now, now," Ms. Pearl had walked over to our table at that second, instructing us that, "Art class is not a place to judge or to criticize. It is a place to relieve, to support, to inspire. Spread your wings, young children; fly with the magic of art. Now, Max, what is it that you drew?"

"It's a bird!" I shouted, angry that no one could tell. I had worked for at least a good three hours on this thing.

"I think it's an awesome bird," Grant said, the first time he had uttered a word in my direction. I inwardly threw up as he winked at me.

"Oh… I see… Well, darling, I do hope your talents consist of other than art," Ms. Pearl said with a smile. I resisted the urge to punch that smile off her face. She turned to Fang. "Now you, my wonderful, show the table what you have drawn."

Fang, being Fang, flipped his drawing over without a hint of expression on his face. My face, though, was soon covered in expression. He had drawn a bird too, except out of colored pencils. Not only had he drawn a bird, he had drawn a picture-perfect, gorgeous drawing of a bird with brown wings and white specks; a bird whose feathers were exactly the colors of mine. The thing was perched upon a branch with its wings spread, looking strong and powerful. I ripped my eyes away from the drawing to look at the artist, surprised to find his dark eyes looking straight at me. I smiled at him, and blushing, I looked back at the picture.

"I thought you said you didn't draw," I muttered, not looking at him.

"I don't," he responded, and in the corner of my eyes I saw him shrug.

The next half an hour involved Ms. Pearl obsessing over Fang and attempting to get him involved in some sort of art competition, while the rest of the class cleaned up. I wonder if Nudge noticed how the bird quite obviously symbolized me, but by the over-the-top, eye-brow-raising looks she gave me, I assumed that she did.

Finally, once the teacher understood there was no way that she was going to get Fang to join her little art thing, she told the class that we may go, and take our pictures with us.

The class full of smelly kids filed out of the smelly classroom, and I shared the most awkward hug of my life with a child named Grant, as Fang smirked behind his back. I should have felt like punching Fang, but thanks to the teenage girl inside of me, I only felt like kissing him.

"Hey," he said to me, as we were the last two to walk out of the place, "I, um, here."

He handed me his drawing as I looked at him, questioning.

"If I come home with a spot on drawing of a _bird_, Gazzy will never let me live in peace," he explained.

"Oh. Yeah, I get it," I said with a smile, carefully folding the paper and putting it in my pocket. I handed him mine, "Just pretend this one's yours."

He shook his head, taking the paper from me and putting it in his own pocket. "I'm going to get even more made fun of with this drawing, you know."

"I know," I answered.

I kept telling myself that I didn't like Fang. Though from that day forward, his drawing was always in my pocket, folded up so small that I couldn't feel it, but I always knew it was there.

* * *

**A/N: Silly, Max. **

**Thank you, person, so much for reading. Most of this story was made up by a mix of my past experience, my love of FAX, and random typing.**

**Now, I don't write these things for money, I write them for you, and it really would mean so much to me if you left a review.**

**It's super easy, really. Just a click of a button, and a handful of key-board hitting and you'll be all set. ;)**

**Also- the picture image for this story IS a colored pencil drawing by some person who has their colored pencil drawing on Google. If it is yours- all rights go to you.**

**Au revoir until next time!**

**FAX on.**


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